Adidas vs. Puma: The Family Rift That Shaped the Sportswear Industry

A rift between two Bavarian brothers, Adolf “Adi” Dassler and Rudolf “Rudi” Dassler, created two of the world’s most iconic footwear companies. 

But before this legendary family feud fueled the Adidas and Puma rivalry, before they competed in arenas and before they built factories on opposite sides of their hometown river, the brothers worked together to transform the sneaker industry.

When Adi and his older brother Rudi returned from fighting in World War I, they started making and selling shoes out of their mother’s house in Herzogenaurach, a sleepy town in Bavaria, Germany. In 1924, they officially formed the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik, the Dassler Brothers Sports Shoe Factory. 

In the 1920s, the athletic shoe market was much smaller than it is today. People weren’t wearing athletic shoes for casual errands or as a fashion statement. Yet both brothers saw a future in sports footwear, and they had developed their own specialties within the field. 

“Adi is more of a shoemaker, Rudi more of a salesperson,” says Nick Smith, author of Kicks: The Great American Story of Sneakers and host of Sneakernomics, a BBC podcast. “You were dealing with equal players here.” 

From 1924 to 1933, the brothers worked well together. Their relationship was “ideal,” according to Rudi, and the family business slowly grew.

As the Nazi Party rose to power in the late 1920s and early 1930s, both Rudi and Adi registered as party members. Supposedly, the brothers did so purely for the business contacts—“or at least that is the story told now,” Smith explains. By the time Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933, the brothers’ company had secured important contracts with Nazi-sponsored businesses.

According to Rudi, 1933 also marked the end of “ideal” relations with his brother. As the business grew, Adi, Rudi and their wives all shared one house, only adding to the stress. Rudi wrote of how Adi’s young wife tried to meddle in the business dealings, but no one is quite sure what exact dispute or disagreement drove the brothers apart, Smith says. 

“Throughout the brothers’ relationship, there was always a bit of tension, but because the business was performing well, that tension was put to the side,” Smith says. “It was a very messy family dynamic that broke the business apart.’” 

For the next few years, the brothers stayed determined to seize business opportunities. Their shoe company outfitted prominent German track stars during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, now commonly referred to as the “Hitler Games.” Photographers even snapped Jesse Owens, the American gold medalist sprinter, racing in a pair of Dassler shoes.

Then, World War II broke out. Rudi fought in Europe, but Adi contested his conscription and was discharged in 1941 in order to run the company. When Rudi returned from the front, both brothers went through the “denazification” required by the Allies. 

After that, the brothers officially split the company in two. In January 1948, Rudi registered his company as Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler, or “RUDA.” Within the year, he changed the business name to PUMA Schuhfabrik Rudolf Dassler. Adi started Adidas in August 1949, using a portmanteau of his first and last names.

They set up factories on opposite sides of the Aurach River, the waterway running through Herzogenaurach. The rivalry split the town in two—literally and metaphorically. 

“Because it is a small town, you kind of chose sides,” Smith says. “There were bakers catering more to the Adidas workers and schools more for the Puma employees’ children. There were even gravestone cutters catering more to one or the other.” 

Both companies pioneered performance-driven design, athlete endorsements and the growing connection between sport and everyday style. In 1954, Adidas popularized the use of interchangeable screw-in studs for cleats, giving West Germany an advantage in their “Miracle of Bern” World Cup victory. Puma similarly advanced footwear through its focus on speed-oriented designs and early athlete sponsorships. Together, their innovations and rivalry pushed athletic shoes beyond niche sporting equipment.

The Dassler brothers passed the business on to their respective heirs, who in turn kept the feud alive. “We didn’t even mention the name of Adidas actually at home,” Rudi’s grandson Michael Dassler told the BBC. “It’s like in Harry Potter...the name ‘Voldemort’ which is not mentioned.” 

The Dassler brothers died four years apart; Rudi in 1974, Adi in 1978. They never mended their relationship, and today they’re buried on opposite sides of the Herzogenaurach cemetery. 

As the years have passed, both companies scored the occasional win over the other, but today’s sneaker space is far different from the tiny industry the Dasslers knew back in the 1920s, Smith says. The rivalry itself has faded in importance: “As the companies got bigger and bigger, the rift didn’t necessarily get bigger and bigger," he says, "having a rivalry feud like this isn’t how you do business anymore.”